


The Shroud of Gray and the Silence

by evening_spirit



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Past Drug Addiction, actually it's mostly hurt and not much comfort, episode 2x11 meMento
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-08 10:45:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17385035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evening_spirit/pseuds/evening_spirit
Summary: John didn't really sleep after he was rescued from the Purifiers. It's impossible to call that experience sleep. What was it then, this strange suspension between reality and the dream plane? And how would it affect him?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A long time ago, when disclaimers were still a thing, I used to write: _Those characters are not mine. I borrowed them and I broke them. Can't make a promise I'll return them fixed._  
>  I broke John Proudstar. I'm not even sorry.
> 
> This story takes place during the episode 2x11, meMento, while John was lying in the background, unconscious. Caitlin said he was sedated. With what, I inquire.  
> 

This fog under his eyelids feels good in a way. Warm, soft, makes his thoughts go slow inside his brain. Lazy. The voices he hears, the sounds of chairs scratching against the floor, plates and cups clanking, they are all distant, non-intrusive. Everything is so far away and so unimportant right now. He knows some things used to be important. Scary, urgent, sharp and bright. But not anymore. It's better this way.

People move around him in their tasks, but they're too fast for him to really register. Someone touches his hand, his body. The pain it causes is dull, distant, just like everything else and even though he feels like he should recoil, he doesn't really want to. He stays unmoving, unresponsive.

The warmth around his hand. The cool cloth on his forehead and cheeks and neck. The smell of lavender (lavender hoops, what was it about lavender hoops?...) Soft fur under his fingertips. Her voice, quiet like a song. The words are too difficult to decipher, but he listens to the sound. Changes in light, smells of food, angry whispers and gentle touches. It all rolls off his mind, comes and goes and passes by, irrelevant, unable to penetrate the fog.

The fog is good. The fog is soft and... gluey. His throat feels scratchy and this experience is too loud suddenly, too near. The fog pulls and tears into wisps that don't protect anymore, from the acrid smell of coffee, from high pitch inside his skull, from bright and hot punctures on his chest and blunt purple pressure spreading down his stomach and thighs.

He gasps. It's his body reacting, not a conscious choice. A sharp intake of breath that makes the burning punctures flare up even brighter.

The warmth around his hand is lavender. The voice is like a fur under his fingertips.

"I'm here, John," it says. "You're alright. You're safe."

The kiss on his knuckles opens like a rose bud, its petals cutting up the exposed nerves all the way through his arm and shoulder, to the base of his throat. They make him choke.

"John, please," the voice urges, "You are safe now. Please."

He tries to focus through the sensations, the mixing of sounds and smells and colors, tries to grab them in his fist and force them down, force them into obedience, but his mind is too exposed and too raw; bleeding.

"I'll go get Caitlin," the voice announces. "Zingo, watch over him!" The lavender dissolves into the air and leaves void in its place. A scary void.

It closes around him, filled only with the rising pitch and the burning of his chest. There's nothing else but those two sensations now and, even though they should be easier to control than earlier tumult, it's harder actually. They are overwhelming. They are everything.

Until the fog returns and in a faint moment of clarity John realizes where he remembers it from. It's the sedatives in his system. They take away the pain and the worry and the urgency of his mission and make the world seem far and unimportant.

And, even though part of him remembers for a heartbeat longer, that he should fight this, that he should be afraid of the fog and not let it take over, this memory is far too late. It becomes as distant and irrelevant as everything else and the fog engulfs him in soft and warm slumber.


	2. Chapter 2

The pain comes and goes, like waves, punctured by short breezes of clarity and interspersed with timeless, endless stretches of fog. Time and time again. John would count, but he forgot the numbers.

He notices that clarity moments get longer though. He makes an effort at one point and forces his eyelids to part. Colors and light are too much then, white-hot spikes thrust into his sore brain, causing it to bleed with molten lava and a blare of out-of-tune instruments. Then it all fades into the fog.

The next time he's more careful. Despite excruciating pain he focuses on his surroundings. His ears won't provide much, battered and bruised, unable to function outside the fog. He smells lavender and dog fur and a stranger who comes near, whispering soft reassurances. The pressure on the inside of his elbow, where skin is thinner. This is the moment; the fog will return soon. He tries to part his lips, squeezes the air through constricted vocal cords, moulds his tongue to articulate words.

"Don't give me any more of this. Let me wake up."

He's not sure how many of those words actually make it out of his mouth.

His ears pick up on the commotion and, combined with the constant shriek and blare and frizz, it does something to his stomach and his intestines want to come right out. His body is manhandled, the world spins out of constraints of his brain and he slips away and away, once more into the welcoming respite of the fog.

Next time, lavender is closer, almost in his face. The pain in his body is murderous, but his consciousness seems to swim above the surface for once.

"John?" lavender asks. It presses against his hand and he moves his fingers to press back against it.

He cracks his eyelids open, just so. Lavender is right there, soft strands running up and down in front of his face. A little to the side, a cheek. Shining green eyes.

"You're awake," lavender breathes out.

"Clarice," he remembers. "Want to," tries, "wake up."

"I have to give him something," another voice rushes in and rips the scabs right off his battered mind. This bleeding will never stop.

But it does. With a fog. It is much thinner though and actually lets him wake up some time later, and recognize his surroundings.

He's home. Clarice is right there and so is Zingo. Other than that it's relatively quiet, just their breathing scratches and grates against the scabs in his ears. They are asleep, so he lets himself drift off again, as well.


	3. Chapter 3

Once more he's brought back to harsh reality, by light and voices that amplify the buzz and mild ringing in his ears. He keeps his eyes closed until Clarice enters, then, his voice coarse from lack of use, he asks her to pull the curtains. And to speak in a low voice.

"Caitlin is here to change your bandages," Clarice whispers. "Are you up for it?"

"Have no choice," John utters and makes a feeble attempt to sit up. All he manages is to lift his head off the pillow, and everything starts spinning and that out-of-tune blare grows louder a notch.

"Not so fast," Caitlin tries and fails to keep her voice below a whisper. She puts her hand against his arm. "I'll give you something for the pain first. The last shot probably wore off already."

"No!" John almost screams. Almost, because if he did, he'd probably die. "No shots," he breathes out.

"I can get you pills, but it will take a few minutes before they start working. Besides, you shouldn't take them on an empty stomach."

"No pills," John utters. That was the whole point of being conscious. To be able to refuse whatever they were dosing him with. He doesn't want it.

He doesn't need it.

He'll muster through the pain, he had not once and not twice.

"John?" Caitlin asks, as if she hadn't heard.

"Help me sit up."

Together, the two women, with some effort from John himself, manage to get his upper body vertical. Then Caitlin unwraps his chest and mutters in wonder at how fast his wounds are healing. They don't even hurt all that bad either, the headache is much worse, but he doesn't have to tell them that. He makes a brave face and calms his breathing and when ministrations are over, both Caitlin and Clarice are expertly fooled.

"I'll get the vial. Just in case," Caitlin promises as she walks out of the apartment.

He's seated up, against the headboard and Clarice tells him to wait just a moment, she'd get him a breakfast. John searches inside his body and, well, he has to admit he is just a little bit hungry.


	4. Chapter 4

Finally he's conscious of the passing time, even when he's resting.

After breakfast – he didn't manage more than a few bites of bread with honey – he takes a nap. He wakes to a strange sensation, like there's a gaping hole in his stomach. He's sweaty and terrified of something that hovers on the edge of his consciousness. Clarice is not home, he tries to call her and there's no response. The fear grows, then, without warning it vanishes like it's never been there.

John hiccups through a lump in his throat. Cold droplets of sweat travel down his hairline and neck. He shivers and pulls the covers higher over his body, and after a couple of minutes he feels like he's on fire, so he throws them away. It's difficult to breathe and the terror inches back, crawls, writhes its way nearer. John forces himself to sit up and, despite wounds, despite ever-present headache and weakness, he makes it all the way to his feet.

He staggers to the bathroom, splashes cold water over his face and wonders why? What happened? What is this fear about? Dying? He's not afraid to die. Getting hurt? He got plenty hurt already. The pain isn't even that bad anymore. Torture? The memory of loud, harsh music being forced onto him makes him gag and nearly throw up, ranks up the ringing in his ears, but that's not it either. Not the source of such deep, primeval terror.

It has passed, again, thanks to moving around the apartment, cold water, maybe even simply standing up. The activity has pushed it away. Is it the fear of being helpless, vulnerable? It's gone now, so it's hard to pin-point.

Since he's already in the bathroom, John uses the toilet and returns to bed just in time for Clarice to arrive.

"What have you been doing?" she asks from the doorway. "How long have you been up?"

"Just took a very demanding trip to the head. Clarice, stop it, I'm fine." He bats her hand away as she tries to check his temperature.

"You should have waited for me."

"Had no idea when you'd be back. And didn't want to, you know..." He makes a vague gesture toward the sheets.

"Fair enough."

She orders him to lay down and takes to preparing dinner.

He does as he's told and listens to her bustling behind a thin wall. God, he loves her so much! Overwhelming sensation makes his stomach scrunch painfully and his eyes sting. He was so awful to her, he doesn't deserve...

It's not exactly the same feeling as earlier, but there's something similar in the sensation so maybe this is it? Fear of failing her, fear of losing her, fear of her hating him for the moron he is. The way he'd thought he had lost her back in that basement. When he blinks, tears roll out the sides of his head, so he wipes them away faster than they appeared. He can't let her see him like this.

If he could only do something to stop this rollercoaster of emotions, if there was some way to...

And then it hits him. There is a way. It is just within his reach. The way to dull the pain and the way to dull the raging feelings.

This is also the very reason those feelings manifest the way they do. The fear, anxiety, terrifying emptiness that can only be filled with... fog.

Caitlin brought him pills and she'd even ordered him to take them. Vicodin. "Two pills," she said. "They should work on you the way Tylenol would on us. Take them every six hours," she said.

He hasn't. He's told himself he'd muster through the pain, because he doesn't want to get hooked up again, but he's already gotten hooked up. She gave him enough opiates to keep him knocked out for the whole day. His body already remembers the relief those substances can provide. And it already craves more.


	5. Chapter 5

John is going to fight it. He makes a strong resolution that he will fight it. The vial of pills is secured in the drawer in the nightstand, where he threw it right after Caitlin had brought it. He needs to get rid of them. Straight into the trash or down the toilet.

No. That's not how.

They are short on suplies and medicines, he's going to have to return them to Caitlin and explain to her why. It will be harder to do, but that's what he has to do. And no, he won't take even one pill, this is not why he doesn't want to destroy them.

Clarice brings him soup and they joke about her cooking skills. He wants to tell her about his craving, but he also wants to apologize for the way he had acted before. Before his ordeal. She deserves an apology. So he does that first.

Tells her about how he lost two people who were his everything, at some point. Whom he loved just like he loves her now. How that nearly destroyed him and how he is scared to let himself feel it now. He's calm when he tells her that; it's her who sheds a tear, because she actually feels the same way. He wants to make a promise, but he knows better than that, so a soft caress is all he can offer.

And then, the phone rings. It's Evangeline.

And then, all priorities shift.

It's not a big shift. Not earth shattering, turning the world upside down shift. No. It's small, like moving a chair a little to the left. But it changes perspective.

John eats his soup and begins to sort through the stations and names in his head. He's making plans, like where they should meet. Evangeline says she's coming to DC, so it's up to him to find a safe location. Clarice asks if the soup is okay and he absentmindedly responds that it's great and only notices her raised eyebrows in the corner of his mind.

There's a lot to plan for and so much to prepare. He knows that he has to make Evangeline and the others listen this time, he has to sell his point, get through to them, so he has to be ready for any and all questions they might have.

He finishes the soup and calls Marcos, Caitlin and Reed to come over, so they can talk. He pushes the sheets away and is ready to get dressed but... His head is spinning.

"John, what are you doing?" Clarice has come to take the plate. "Lie down."

"Marcos will be here in five, I have to," John breathes between the words. "Reed and Caitlin too." He's tired and he's shaken and he can't be a leader this way.

"No way. I'll call them and let them know the meeting will be held at a later time. You need to rest."

John shakes his head, but it only makes things worse as his body protests against all movement. His chest, his head, his stomach, everything hurts, albeit not as much as it had before. Still, the pain makes him weak.

If he just lied down, it would lessen, he knows, but he can't afford to lie down now.

And there's another way to get rid of the pain.

The priorities have shifted.

This, the meeting with Evangeline, is the most important thing right now, it is more important than his issues. He looks at the drawer. He shouldn't, but he opens it nonetheless. Pulls out the vial. What about that resolution, a faint voice inside his head tries to speak up, but a louder voice responds, that it is still on. The resolution is still valid. He is going to fight his addiction. This, those two pills on the palm of his hand, it's just this once, because he has to.

It is only this once, he promises himself as he tilts his head up and swallows them dry.

#

.end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. This is it, this is the fic. Have I mentioned I'm not good at fixing things?
> 
> Well, honestly, a part of me wants to turn it into a 'verse, but... a lot depends on what happens in the final two episodes of the season.   
> Also, some of the inspiration depends on you, Dear Readers. Remember, if you liked this story... I can't read your minds. If you don't tell me you liked it, I'll never find out. So. Tell me. Or stay silent if you thought it was bad or uninteresting. ;)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. :)


End file.
